Ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby
Do you shardmind if I take a moment of your time?
Click to embiggen
Oh gee, geode.
“A young girl who’s skin is a bright red with most of her right side containing large patches of smooth crimson crystals that seem to replace the flesh it covers..” And I thought the pain in the diodes all down my left side was bad. Fellas, you’re not breaking off a piece without a mining pick. “All throughout her body, her blood veins are visible with a unique glow that shows every inch of flowing blood.” Ought to make CT scans quicker, except that only her blood veins are visible, as opposed to… the other ones.
“Both eyes have a unique look, her left eye contains no white but is now pink and contains a feline-like pupil that glows crimson in color.” As we all know, cats are halfway between people and rock candy. “Her right side is far different, containing no physical eye but made up by swirling, cloudy energies that form a fiery orange iris with a pure black pupil in the core of the vortex.” On one side, we have a cat’s eye with conjunctivitis. On the other, we have the Great Red Spot.
“A large scar glowing bright red, like an open wound that never fully healed, sets over the right side of her face from the top of her brow, over her eye and down just below the edge of her lips.” As open wounds typically do, of course. It’s interesting, normally it’s the guys that go for the badassery scar. In this case it’s a girl whose face looks like Netherstorm.
“Both ears would be far too short for an elf and they would look completely human if not for the fact that the tips are pointed, however if one were to inspect closer there would be tiny scars done by blade and stitching, perhaps to give it that look.” So she’s not so much an ‘actual elf’ as she is a ‘deviantArt target demographic.’
“Finally, her body is neither as lithe or graceful as most elves are, but rather voluptuous when compared to the average female elf, however by no means does she look overweight and, if seen, there would be some muscle tone on her arms, legs, and perhaps even her stomach.” I’m not a human! I swear it! I’m just… a sin’dorei from the House of Mix-a-lot!
How can we make this better? By not slowly morphing into my home campaign’s avenger of Ioun. Elves have good lore! We here at RPL like elf lore! There should never be anything boring about being a ‘mere’ sin’dorei. Histories of betrayal and brushes with too much (?) power color the blood elves, and the reactions to and beliefs toward such events ensure a great variety of personality in the race. Be an elven warlock, not a half-garnet.
Everything else about this RSP is great. It’s physical description only with no crazy backstory or OOC rants about how to /roll fight. It’s solid. You just need to start abiding by the whole Don’t Make People Want to Burn Me at the Stake rule and you should be in good shape.
Lanuria Dawnblade, a.k.a. Courtney Adler, aspires. She's an aspiring DM, aspiring photographer, and aspiring wife. She lives in Monroe, Wisconsin and complains about the weather far too much. She enjoys The Big Bang Theory and singing the songs from Glee.
Varendil Dawnblade, a.k.a. Taylor Vincent, is a 22-year old writer, student, World of Warcraft player, and 4th Edition DM. He lives in Monroe, Wisconsin with his fiancé and their jade plant, Esmeralda. He likes Douglas Adams and The Venture Bros. He hates Toni Morrison. Don't even ask. 
Thanks for the Jupiter reference.
May 30, 2011 at 1:38 am
So THAT’S where the GRS went.
May 30, 2011 at 7:45 am
Also: If you got rid of the ‘non-elven’ traits, you’d have a solid character going on. If you’re talented enough to make a half-elf work (which is usually just a badly-done cliche), you might even be able to get away with the not-quite-fully-elven ears, though I’d recommend against it.
May 30, 2011 at 7:47 am
There’s nothing wrong with this RSP or character. She could be involved in roleplay where her character was afflicted by a curse that is slowly turning her into stone.
May 30, 2011 at 11:37 am
*Highfive!*
May 31, 2011 at 3:27 am
Thank you, Terras, for showing that you have an open mind and understanding that there may be more going on here than what’s written. RSPs are for physical description, not the character’s full history. d(^_^d)
May 31, 2011 at 9:45 pm
Apart from the fact her spontaneous mutation very likely hasn’t shown up in lore before, her Rp buddies think this wouldn’t be KoS in Silvermoon, she’s faction-derping around and probably bothering to Rp in places she’d been KoS in since the ‘cap was taken in Silvermoon.
And the Alliance would be even more ‘kill it with fire’ in 90% of areas.
June 2, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Why would it be KoS? Cuz she looks weird?
June 4, 2011 at 2:30 pm
Because she looks like a demon and Azeroth has bad experience with those.
She also looks like a messy whargarbl ‘wtf is dat’ which is bad considering having a demon out in Stormwind is illegal + the Sin’dorei would probably think the bright red skin means she’s a felblood, ergo not something that should be walking about with the locals.
June 4, 2011 at 10:29 pm
She’s not a demon.
June 4, 2011 at 11:57 pm
Yes, but she has bright red skin and a bunch of other miscellaneous traits. I doubt the guards will stick around to doublecheck if she’s a felblood or not because she’s _definitely_ cause for suspicion.
June 6, 2011 at 7:03 pm
I can’t imagine her as anything other then heavily sunburned.
As for the non-elf traits, I could actually see something like that being plausible: Maybe a Blood Elf didn’t particularly care for having to leave the alliance in order to show patriotism for the Sin’dorei, so got some serious surgery done in order to look more human. From the description, it seems that all she’d need to do is throw a hat and some sunglasses on and she’d pass as a human.
Also, the title made me think of this song.
May 30, 2011 at 12:58 pm
I don’t see why she needs messed up eyes. But the curse thing could actually be quite a good reason for her to slowly be turning into an overgrown shiny pebble, not nearly as bad as some things i see posted here
<3
May 30, 2011 at 1:07 pm
This RSP is not nearly as bad as some stuff i see posted here** :c
May 30, 2011 at 1:07 pm
She’s obviously just geming her sockets.
http://www.awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=060710
May 30, 2011 at 1:39 pm
>By not slowly morphing into my home campaign’s avenger of Ioun
Now I’m picturing a semi-crystalline belf orbiting someone’s head and I can’t stop laughing.
May 30, 2011 at 2:58 pm
The fact that she’s a gleaming mining node ready to be plinked aside, the description itself is pretty darn good. I mean, she didn’t tie down and torture a thesaurus, and her spelling/grammar seem spot on. It says what it needs to in order to paint the picture without being boring or overly verbose. Granted, the character’s appearance isn’t my cup of tea, but the execution itself is great.
I’d be interested in seeing her backstory for this character. I’m curious now as to whether she has a good reason for the form and a good tale to tell or she’s just plain ol’ Suetastic.
May 30, 2011 at 7:33 pm
If you look, this RSP has little sentence structure. The grammar here is just as bad as “any1 who typez liek diz”.
June 14, 2011 at 10:25 pm
Sometimes, scarring can also be a bit over-the-top.
My physical body has plenty. They’re more a PITA than a favor, often prone to “cramping” or aching whenever it’s inappropriate, and rubbing them often has my wife or a GF telling me off for ‘fidgeting”.
In RP, tabletop or otherwise, I’m usually pretty strict about them when I see them. They have stories – some heroic, some horrible, and I know my own ones very much so. The character had better have a good idea of how theirs happened, even if they wanted some cosmetic surgery and the $2 razor blades were on discount sale…
“Wanna know how I got this scar?”
May 30, 2011 at 9:55 pm
I dunno… I might throw a post her way, see what happens, try to find out why, (and if it’s plausible) the whole, turning into stone thing is happening. After all, it is well written, like, you, said, and does make me curious. Which is what an RSP is supposed to do.
I mean, it’s a magical world of magical things and not everyone is going to be safe.
‘ Course, some if my characters would try to kill it with fire. But on a more ‘Oh gods I don ‘t wanna get that horrible disease.’
May 31, 2011 at 3:35 am
I had a long RP with this character once — she’s actually quite good, there’s a lengthy backstory to all of the weird skin growths and such. Not attacking you guys, I’ve been a reader for a long time, I was just surprised to see her end up here.
May 31, 2011 at 7:21 pm
I think in this case it’s less for her form/actual ability to RP and more about how drastically “out there” her appearance is. Because if we’re being honest and this was actually taking place in a living world, the first guard to catch a glimpse of her would probably be sounding the alert and shooting something pointy in her general direction.
However, due to gameplay mechanics this doesn’t come out, so most people take it as free-reign to do whatever they want with no thoughts to the actual repercussions of the appearance.
For instance, if a human girl were born with a succubus tail and horns, the happy little family would likely have the roof torched over their happy little heads. Kinda conflicts with the immersion for some people if she’s being played as 16, busty, and bouncing around Stormwind, as most people will boggle at how she ever even GOT to that age to begin with. So I can understand how people would be bothered by this, even if I’m not so bothered myself. My griping is aimed more toward HOW the character is played. Still, I can see this description starting her off in the negatives with a lot of people, regardless of how well she’s actually written the description.
Which is kind of a shame, really.
May 31, 2011 at 8:12 pm
She is actually Human. I rped with her too. Became quite the stalker >.>
May 31, 2011 at 8:16 pm
So she’s a belf played as a human pretending to be an elf that looks like a human who’s turning into a rock.
There’s such a thing as too much.
June 1, 2011 at 10:29 am
Mistana is a darn good RPer with an imagination and level of story-telling that goes beyond the limitations set by the game. Stop knocking her RSP and actually RP with her and find out how she got that way before judging her. It has a history to it that is not only plausible, but also banks on the elements programmed into the game.
As for the human version of her toon, she has both a human version and a belf version. I’m calling bullsh** on the allegations of stalking – dream on, you perv, Mistana is way out of your league and the human version has only been around for a few days.
And a message to the people which I have a hunch are the reason this page is even here, none of you will give her the time of day just because of her RSP. You judged her based on that alone and are now subjecting her to this mess of critiques from people who don’t know wtf is going on. I hope you’re happy with yourselves because I sure as f*** am -not-.
May 31, 2011 at 9:42 pm
Other people aren’t going to stop and roleplay with her before judging her. They’re going to judge her the second they read about how calcified she is and they may well do it much more harshly than I did. Your RSP, in many ways, is your first impression, and there are plenty of people who will turn the hell around and walk away after seeing this.
I don’t know how great a roleplayer she is. I never claimed to. To an extent, I don’t care. I wrote the piece about her RSP and stand by it.
As for the rest of your drama, don’t bring it ’round here.
And for fuck’s sake, you can swear. There’s nothing more pathetic than using swear words, but being too scared to actually type them out. Well, there are worse things, but not many.
May 31, 2011 at 10:20 pm
A few parting shots:
She isn’t ‘calcified’, she’s been drenched in the energy of the crystals that pollute Asuremyst for someone else’s twisted science experiment and her body reacted to it as posted in her RSP. See, if you people would RP with her, you’d know this already.
I never said you knew how her RP was and neither did anyone else here.
If you don’t want drama, delete this site – all it causes is unnecessary drama.
And I’ve been banned from similar sites for not censoring myself.
May 31, 2011 at 10:40 pm
Okay, you’re at about a ten, we need you at about a six.
Seriously, ease up. The critique here has actually been pretty mild on this particular RSP, and I don’t really think your biffle needs you here whiteknighting for her. Your potshot about drama only makes you a hypocrite, because you’re bringing it full-swing, and as far as I can see, you initiated it. No one else was pitching a spaz. Be angry if you feel the need to, but you can’t really expect that it’s going to change what anyone thinks. In all honesty, coming in here guns a-blazing only hurts your cause, IMO. You look childish. Worse, it’s not because you can’t take criticism on your work. It’s because you can’t take criticism on someone else’s, when even they haven’t shown up to say their piece.
Lan and Var aren’t brainwashers. They don’t force people to think any particular way about someone just because they keep a blog. If you’ve read any of their RSPs on purple prose, you’d know that, since many of the readers don’t tend to agree with them on that particular subject.
If the author takes issue with the RSP, let her speak for herself. She doesn’t need a mouthpiece. If you don’t like the site, don’t read it. Simple as that.
And I’m still totally waiting on the history tab. Still curious about the full background on this one.
May 31, 2011 at 11:28 pm
NEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRDRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE
Dimes to dollars says you’ve actually been banned from similar sites for losing your shit and acting like a twelve-year-old, snookums, but you go ahead and delude yourself all you like. :3
June 1, 2011 at 10:42 am
You know the phrase “Don’t like, don’t read?”
Fun fact. It applies to internet websites where people with RSP flags/MRP descriptions wildly out of the norm for what you would consider feasible and lore-abiding are given an honest, fair critique. I know how that sounds considering I’m usually one of the first to grab a torch and pitchfork, but that’s on me. V and L are far more than fair in their assessments and tend more often than not to err on the side of caution.
Telling them to delete their site (which HAS, in fact, helped people) because you don’t like what they posted makes you an arrogant cockbite whiteknighting for their dear poor friend in a situation where most people here have largely noted the only thing wrong with the RSP is her appearance, something that should have the city guards firebombing her from a distance if they didn’t outright prevent her from entering the city to begin with. It’s a case of the game mechanics being abused by a roleplayer–Metzen himself even said that the only reason guards don’t aggro on, say, warlocks with their demons out is for gameplay concerns, and that in-universe it’s an entirely different animal.
June 1, 2011 at 4:52 pm
Alright. I’m the one who caused the whole crystal growth thing through RP.
I don’t think it’s as extreme as the description suggests. In Silvermoon I doubt she’d be too much of an oddity to any of the citizens, as a lot of her traits suggest fel addiction. Wretched have the same thing — odd skin tone, bulging veins, vividly glowing eyes, crystals growing out of their skin, and unless they’re being violent, the Silvermoon guards don’t really bother with them.
(at least this is my interpretation of it. The Wretched kill quests suggest that we’re killing them because of recent attacks by certain groups of Wretched, not simply because they’re Wretched.)
It was previously mentioned somewhere that she’s not a real Blood Elf. My character found her out. She cropped her ears and pretty much tainted her within an inch of her life with fel magic. She’d fallen into bad company who also knew her secret and kept her hidden, so it’s not as if she’d been waltzing around the city as an obvious non-elf/half-elf like it was nobody’s business.
I know this isn’t about the quality of her RP, but I’m worried that if people see this, my friend won’t have a good reputation on the server, when really, she’s nowhere near as deserving of it as most of the people posted on this website are.
I still love the website, I just really felt the need to white-knight for Mistana. I’ve had a lot of good times with her.
June 1, 2011 at 6:13 pm
“Wretched have the same thing — odd skin tone, bulging veins, vividly glowing eyes, crystals growing out of their skin, and unless they’re being violent, the Silvermoon guards don’t really bother with them.”
They’ve killed a courier and they’re kinda hiding around some ruins. One of them just waltzing about the place would get killed, they’re kinda notorious for attacking people to get their magic fix.
Note how the starting quest says ‘keep your magic addiction in check’ because of what becomes of those guys, there is more than one group of vicious wretched mulling about (The overtaken harbour, that lodge in the Plaguelands, the ruins…). The citizens wouldn’t shrug their shoulders at teh amazing rock-lady, they would panic.
“It was previously mentioned somewhere that she’s not a real Blood Elf. My character found her out. She cropped her ears and pretty much tainted her within an inch of her life with fel magic.”
That…May or may not get her looking more akin to a felblood elf then a rock person or even a wretched.
Also I ‘unno, if your warlock is sensible why’d they do that? Waste of energy when you can just kill or maim the sod rather then making them a mutant KoS thingymabob no?
“I know this isn’t about the quality of her RP, but I’m worried that if people see this, my friend won’t have a good reputation on the server,”
Her Rp description will affect that, not whether its pasted up on the site or not.
Haven’t read through this thing in its entirety but is there an example of ‘slowly turned into rock or whatever’ in lore? For her particular race as well?
Sometimes you whoopsy in Rp and need to go back n’ change some details.
June 1, 2011 at 8:42 pm
“She isn’t ‘calcified’, she’s been drenched in the energy of the crystals that pollute Asuremyst for someone else’s twisted science experiment and her body reacted to it as posted in her RSP”
Here’s the problem with magic things and mutations, unless you know what its going to do for that particular species then don’t touch it, lest the character looks like a lorelol. Last I checked the effects have been shown on rabbits and maybe draenei, could be wrong but they were vastly different so in all honestly? Its better left untouched.
June 1, 2011 at 8:46 pm
Reading all this has actually made me want to RP with this person. Maybe sometimes it pays not to jump to conclusions and see things for oneself.
June 1, 2011 at 2:15 am
I think some people overestimate the violence of guards…
June 1, 2011 at 9:34 pm
I think some people underestimate the fact that the guards are there to do a job. And I’m pretty sure that keeping freakshows, psychotic magic addicts etc out of the area they’re guarding is part of the job description.
Metzen himself stated that the guards not attacking warlocks for having demons out was solely for the purpose of game mechanics, and that in the “real” Azeroth, if you will, that shit wouldn’t fly. And that’s a standard class we all know and play.
This? This is an anomaly, to put it nicely. Since I’ve seen stuff about this character as a human, try this on for size:
You’re a human guard. Let’s say you’re guarding the Stormwind gates rather than patrolling a smaller town border. Your people have, in recent years, been manipulated and played by dragons in human guise. You’ve lost and recovered your king, and suffered the loss of one of your greatest heroes at the hands of a fearsome enemy who you once considered an ally. That same enemy slaughtered a town’s worth of people and razed the place before prancing off to do some more damage with his evil magics n’ such. We finally manage to put him into the ground for good and out pops ANOTHER dragon, Papa Dragon to your Mistress Dragon, and he’s pretty pissed. He makes the pretty part of your city go *poof*.
Now this chick strolls up to the gates. I’m gonna guess that by this point you’re pretty paranoid and suffering a serious case of PTSD. I’d also wager you don’t put much trust into strange, unnatural-looking beings these days. Would you let her in without batting an eyelash?
My guess would be no. If you answered yes, then I’m assuming you’d very quickly find yourself looking for a new job or on the run from facing prison/execution for possibly endangering your citizenry and the subsequent pandemonium that breaks out from mass hysteria.
These people–the civilians, not the adventurers we play–would be TERRIFIED of anything strange or suspicious-looking these days. Who could blame them? Your everyday backwoods farmers outside the city would likely already have the torches and pitchforks at the ready LONG before she got to their gates.
Really, I think that’s the main issue here. I know it’s just a game and a lot of people seem to have the mentality of “I can play any way I damn well please and to hell with whatever the lorenazis say,” and to a point they’re right. No one can stop them. But they’re typically less well-received than the people who abide by the guidelines and rules of the world set by its creators.
June 1, 2011 at 10:33 pm
This.
Heck, I tried the Northrend Alliance quests recently and they make note of sending your hero-character out to do shit because the civilians signing up for the war effort aren’t used to working with other races.
I had a look at this later when my brain was less tired and from what I can gather, she has bright red skin and itty bitty ears. Ya know, like a Felblood elf. Ya know, like that boss in the Kael’thas dungeon that sounds like he’s having an orgy when you fight him. I don’t think that’ll go down with any of them well, whether they know its an elf-that-snacked-on-demon-blood or not.
June 2, 2011 at 12:01 pm
Agreed. I know she looks strange and all, but I’m pretty sure the guards don’t go “OMG SUMTHIN WEIRD KEEL IT!” all the time. I’d assume they’d capture the thing first and investigate before killing first and asking questions later. And if she’s been in the area long enough, and if local people know her, then there’s less of a chance of people killing her, I’d assume.
June 4, 2011 at 3:04 pm
Well, to Silvermoon they would probably just assume its a felblood elf/not likely to play nice in terms of saying wtf it actually is if its, say, a demonic spy with the IQ of a goldfish.
June 4, 2011 at 10:33 pm
Um um um. I’m confused. So she’s a blood elf playing as a human who’s trying to look like an elf?
The whole geode-girl thing could kind of sort of work, IF she ditched some of the other crap:
1) Play one race. Pick the side you really want to be able to interact with and play that race. Don’t be a belf that really isn’t a belf that maybe is pretending to be one.
2) DITCH THE EYES. Seriously, whaaaaat? Those sound like some of the derpy custom mod eyes for Oblivion that serve only to take up space as I flip through to find the bright green eyes that were the only real reason I got the mod in the first place. In short, they make the character look like the product of the mind of a 12-year-old who’s read too much manga. There is no way to fix this other than to replace it completely.
3) Ditch the face scar, or at least change it up. The face scar is so cliche and not nearly as pretty as people think. If you have to do it, mix it up. The only time I’ve used it was on a troll – and it was a mass of scar tissue on her forehead that had Durotar gravel imbedded in it because she’d regenerated before picking it out of the wound; she got headaches all the time from it. Maybe you could have crystals sprouting from this scar, like her face is about to split in two.
4) Wear a dang cloak! What people’ve said about the guards is right. Right now the character looks like a cross between some kind of freaky alien egg and this:
http://www.wowpedia.org/images/4/4b/Colossus.jpg
So yeah. Most people don’t want that in their town. If you cover it up, maybe say “She wears a cloak, clearly hiding something. A faint red glow is visible from beneath the hood,” then you’re simultaneously helping us believe the guards aren’t killing her on sight and enticing us to figure out what is up with the creepy cloak chick.
Then maybe I could see this being a legit RP character with a really interesting story.
June 6, 2011 at 1:29 am
I RPed with this person once. She’s a sweet girl from the brief moment that I spent RPing with her. She explained that the reason she has crystals in her skin is because someone dunked her into the Sunwell. I think it was a vengeful ex lover but I could be mis-remembering this. I’m not sure if that helps or makes it worse, though.
June 17, 2011 at 8:26 pm
I’d say worse given that the Sunwell doesn’t seem like the kind of thing to make you look like a demonic rock candy.
June 28, 2011 at 4:00 am
This “sweet girl” is actually a man, btw, if that makes any difference (it does).
June 22, 2011 at 7:44 am